Human Rights Day: UN calls for building on momentum of an ‘extraordinary year’

Human Rights Day: UN calls for building on momentum of an ‘extraordinary year’

9 December 2011 – Building on the momentum for change triggered by the Arab Spring, top United Nations officials have urged everyone, everywhere to join in the Internet and social media campaign launched on the occasion of Human Rights Day to help more people know, demand and defend their rights.

“In 2011, the very idea of ‘power’ shifted,” High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay said in a message to mark Human Rights Day, which is observed annually on 10 December.

We know there is still too much repression in our world, still too much impunity, still too many people for whom rights are not yet a reality.

“During the course of this extraordinary year, it was wielded not just by mighty institutions in marble buildings, but increasingly by ordinary men, women, and even children, courageously standing up to demand their rights,” she said.

“The message of this unexpected global awakening was carried in the first instance not by the satellites of major media conglomerates, or conferences, or other traditional means – although these all played a role – but by the dynamic and irrepressible surge of social media.”

This year’s Day is building on the pro-reform movements witnessed across North Africa and the Middle East, and social media’s vital contribution to them, to encourage more people to get involved in the global human rights movement.

The campaign by the UN human rights office (OHCHR) focuses on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and aims to help more people know, demand and defend human rights.

“Today, as in the past, editorial and financial factors – as well as access – determine whether or not protests, and repression of protests, are televised or reported in newspapers around the world,” noted Ms. Pillay. “But, wherever it happens, you can now guarantee it will be tweeted on Twitter, posted on Facebook, broadcast on YouTube, and uploaded onto the Internet…

“Instead we are seeing real lives in real struggle, broadcast in real time – and it is in many ways an exhilarating sight,” she added. “In sum, in 2011, human rights went viral.”

Today at UN Headquarters, Ms. Pillay hosted a global human rights dialogue at which she answered questions sent in via different social media platforms from all over the world.

It was one of several elements of the “Celebrate Human Rights” campaign, which also featured an online discussion on Facebook and Twitter that began a month ago called “30 Days and 30 Rights” that counted down to the Day with a daily posting about one article of the Declaration....READ MORE